Bethany Perron
USA

I've been fascinated by photography since I got my first Kodak 110 at age 5. It wasn't about art then; I was trying desperately to document my world, to show others what I saw at 3 feet high. My artistic expression at the time was actually through sketching and poetry. But I read and studied my photography books, and grew to see how an artist's vision is revealed through the medium of film. In college, I chose to major in art history, but took 4 years of photography classes, while also running the campus photo lab. Then digital photography became accessible, and it was a huge revolution for me. Suddenly I could experiment fearlessly. I learned to manipulate images in Photoshop. I could create anything I could dream, using photos.
Those dreams are usually based in fantasy and science fiction, but with a strong dose of the literary and archetypal. Inspiration can come from songs lyrics, overheard snippets, or sometimes just the strange twisting of words and images in my mind.
My work is sometimes dark, sometimes challenging, but my aspiration is to draw the viewer into an exchange full of questions, into a space where mystery, power, and magic are the driving forces.

Artistic Moods

On special nights, when the stars align just so, an initiate may wander into the circle and attempt the projection. Her soul may then wander where it will, exploring, experiencing different times and places, before rejoining the corporeal form at the first light of dawn.

Inspired by the tales of Narnia (with a little Golden Compass thrown in), The Snow Queen represents the iconic play of beauty and danger. We know the fate that will befall us, but we are drawn to her presence nonetheless.

Mikala had worked with the droid probe for over 3 years. Their mission was to report intelligence concerning the strange new land masses that had been seen sprouting over the icy surface of Europa like fungi. But probes have the nasty habit of being free from complicity, and when KT503 found conflic...

In a world sparse and dying, the magic of a single rose calls forth its champions, each side wanting to preserve it at the expense of the other. This came out of a challenge to try something more painterly, though it is still completely a Photoshop composition.

After hours of wandering the labyrinthian passages of the castle-city, she finally found a way out. Freedom from this nightmare at last! Just as she reached the door, something caught her eye. A rabbit? In this place? Maybe it sought the same escape as she did. Well, she would free it too. Then she...

This is a combination of a couple themes. #1- It is based on the sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ozymandias is the Greek name for the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II, and the poem describes coming upon the singular wreck of a colossal statue with the ironic inscription of “Look on my works, ye Mighty,...

This piece was made to accompany a poem I wrote, which unfortunately due to this default paragraph formatting, cannot be included here. It described nuns called to a sacred spring, and drew a parallel to the soul's longing for some mystical unknown.

Arianne had always dismissed the local tales about the “Spirit Pool”. It’s just a puddle in the woods, she thought, when she saw it in the daylight, though many had claimed to see ghosts in this lonely spot. Loved ones who had passed on appeared to some; those wronged appeared to others with more gu...

Mythology is not in the past. Athena's wisdom can carry us forward. She is the keeper of the olive branch and the only other Olympian who can wield Zeus's lightning. Knowing when to be at peace, knowing when to fight for our rights, her guidance transcends time.

When the Fairy King abducted Kella from the Beltane festival, as was the centennial custom between the realms of Fey and Human, she was terrified. The stories, told to frighten children into behaving, portrayed the Fairy King as a monster, and indeed he was brutish at first. But his visits to her ce...

This was loosely inspired by the lyrics in Ani DiFranco's song '32 Flavors':
"And god help you if you are a phoenix/And you dare to rise up from the ash/A thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy/While you are just flying past."

"At only 29, Mila Delano was already the world's foremost Egyptologist. Her ability to locate buried cities, secret chambers, and lost tombs was uncanny. Colleagues half-joked that she was a reincarnated temple priestess with a long and highly detailed memory. The truth was much stranger. And far mo...

This piece is a cautionary tale, warning women not to give away significant parts of themselves in exchange for gifts, flattery, or empty promises. We are neither vending machines nor robots, and this work serves as a reminder to stay strong and true to ourselves.

If only Ophelia had not been so fragile, and so broken by the death of her father, she may have realized that Hamlet was not at all a good choice for her. This image represents the strong Ophelia who need not drown and who may someday find a man worthy of her love.

Loosely inspired by Frank Herbert's novel "Dune", the navigator has the power to see through time and space in order to plot a course. My more human interpretation is intense and focused, the only telemetry: his mind.

This piece is about women giving up personal power to please others, who then feel free to use them as toys, as slaves. It is difficult for the puppet to cut her own strings and free herself, so it is better to assert one's right to say "no" from the start.

This was inspired by one of my favorite poems, "A Dream" which is featured at the end of one of my favorite books, The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse. In the poem, the narrator, who is presumably the main character of the novel, Joseph Knecht, recounts a dream in which he discovers "the library of...

Inspired by the lyric in Pink Floyd's song "High Hopes", this piece represents the irony of youth wanting the rewards of adult life, and then realizing as an adult, the "world of magnets and miracles" that was inherent in childhood. Does that gate close forever?